Quality difference with MKV?

[pixaren]

I just wonder if there is diffrences in playback quality between play a MKV (x.264) from my PC to my TV and if i take for an example a WD Media Player with the picture processor Sigma EM8655 inside.
Can i tell difference in the picture quality?
Does the graphic card in my PC (Asus EAH2400) affect the picture quality as well or is it so little that it's not worth upgrading just for that?

[jman98]

It depends on how the connection is set up from your PC to TV. Some HDTVs only accept VGA input from computers and that should be a lower quality picture than you would get from a WD player. Can you actually tell any difference though? Hard to say. If your TV accepts DVI or HDMI input from a PC then I would not expect you to notice any difference and feel that getting a better graphics card would not result in any quality difference you could see.

[jagabo]

ATI graphics cards have AVIVO functions that can perform a lot of filtering. Nvidia has similar functionality. Whether or not your video needs that is another question.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4380/discrete-htpc-gpus-shootout
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4263/amds-radeon-hd-6450-uvd3-meets-htpc

WDTV graphics processing is primitive in comparison.

[jman98]

The TV itself may do its own sharpening and possible filtering of the image on top of it, which makes me question whether paying for a better video card to do the job is really even necessary.

[jagabo]

Deblocking and deringing is useful for standard definition DVD and Divx/Xvid. Sharpening (the way it's implemented in a playback scenario) is almost never necessary. Most of the telecine patterns that HQV test for are rarely ever seen. The color and contrast is already correct for any professional Blu-ray or DVD source. And noise reduction is almost always a detriment to Blu-ray or DVD sources.